Randolph Scott

[BWilson]

The only western with Randolph Scott that I've seen is his last, Ride the High Country. Can anyone fill me in on his career highlights? Albuquerque is on DVD from Universal but it doesn't sound like it's one of his best. What else of his is on DVD?

[Martha]

There is some discussion of The Tall T in this thread. To find out what's on dvd, I just went to dvdempire and typed "Randolph Scott" into the search box...

[Derek Estes]

I really love the films Scott made with Bud Boetticher starting with Seven Men from Now -hopefully to be released on DVD this year by Paramount as part of the Batjac films they now have the distribution to- followed by a series of films they made together, referred to as The Ranown Cycle which include The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Again, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station -all owned by Columbia, and none available on DVD-many never released on VHS. All of these films are pretty short, most of them run excactly 72min. They would make a fantastic boxed-set.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I can second the recommendation for Seven Men From Now. An excellent film and the UCLA archival print is superb - hopefully this print will be used for the DVD. Scott is an underrated star and almost all of his westerns from Jesse James onwards are worth seeing.

[Gordon]

Beautiful widescreen presentations have appeared on British TV recently.

Hopefully, DVD editions will be available soon.

[Polybius]

Since that original thread, I've seen The Tall T, 3:10 to Yuma and Johnny Guitar, all. I liked them all, to a greater or lesser degree and recommend them all.

The Tall T is a bit weird and it does show the hallmarks of being a somewhat run of the mill production, but I like the relationship between Richard Boone and Scott. (Boone sees him as something of a kindred spirit, more so that his outlaw colleagues, Silva and the always easily hateable Skip Homier, who he rather looks down on.)

It's sort of an early pass at the kinship that Harmonica and Frank felt in Once Upon A Time. Two bulls in the pasture.

[Gordon]

Gordon a question - from the caps it looks like the movies were all screened in 1.78 (i.e. filling the 16/9 screen) - was this the case?

Yes. Commance Station was indeed cropped to 1.78 after the 2.35:1 credits. The master will be 2.35:1, but cropped by C4 for broadcast. I really hope that we see a slew of Boetticher very soon.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Anyone searching for comments on Comanche Station isn't going to find much in this thread.

[Gordon]

Anyone searching for comments on Comanche Station isn't going to find much in this thread.

They will now, muthafucka!

[Narshty]

That Comanche Station broadcast looked pretty good, but the elements were very variable from scene to scene. At points it looked downright 16mm, but generally was very lovely. Buchanan Rides Alone looked great and was far better than I expected for an allegedly "minor" Boetticher work. Only one ad break in the middle of both was much appreciated - nicely restrained, Channel 4.

BBC2 also screened Ride Lonesome at the start of July on a Sunday morning of all the inconsiderate times. I presume that too was 16:9, but only found out about it a couple of hours after it had been on. Gutted wasn't the word.